Old Rhymes
by Juliedoo
Summary: And all the king's horses and all the king's men (she couldn't be put back together again). fem!Shisui/Itachi


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Now, how did that old rhyme go? And all the king's horses and all the king's men (she couldn't be put back together again).

Or something like that.

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The night flutters its moth wings, a dark locust swarm buzzing over the crooked mountain spine. The horizon bleeds into the ground, its color soaked up by the thorny grass. Shisui stands and breathes, watching the day collapse in on itself, a sinking ship in murky water. She can hear frogs burping, clearing their mucusy throats; a firefly hikes across her bare toes, dimming in and out, a tiny dying sun.

The moon has ripped a bright tear in the sky, and crickets are crouched in the bushes, whispering to each other. Spiders of pain scurry up her legs, the muscles cramped and clenching. She has been a statue for hours.

She feels like a paper girl, bent this and that way, such a pretty little _origami _bird, look how she flies. Her wings can scrape heaven, but they rip so easily.

This is what it's like to be torn in half. Middle split. A here and there person. And her eyes can see what's happening, what's going to happen, but all she can do is blink. Blink and hope they watch the swirls in the scarlet. Maybe then everything can be reset, and her world won't crack like a dropped egg.

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"They asked me to spy on you," she breathes against his damp skin.

The tangled sheets stink of sex. Her hair (wild and springy and frizzy, it eats combs, but he likes to tangle his fingers in it) spills across the pillow like a nest of coiled blacksnakes.

"I surmised as much," his lips brush her ear. It tickles. "As suspicious as they are of me, it was only a matter of time before they assigned a tail."

Itachi is thirteen. His cheeks are round with baby fat, his body small, frail, but rigid with muscle and stress. Sleepless bags sag under his ancient eyes.

Shisui should probably feel like a pedophile, but Itachi has never been a child, not really, and they both need comfort. They are surrounded by people, but they are always alone. Except when they're together.

"It's okay," she tells him, propping herself up and slinging her leg over his hip. She sinks down and his lashes fan down over his inky stare, half lidded as she rocks against him. "I've almost mastered it," she sighs, and his calloused hands skim her sides, trace her back. "We just have to get them all in once place, and then I'll cast it."

His fingers grip her tighter, desperate bruises. They say nothing after that but grunts and gasps, spoken to a lonely room in an empty house of a suburban prison.

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_Stupid_, she is so _stupid_.

A hot coal of pain burns where her eye used to be, and blood paints her face like rouge. Her fingers blur together, and fire gushes out of her lips, a blazing comet that gouges death and cooked flesh through the crust of Danzo's toy soldiers.

Shisui is strong, the pride of her clan, she is a woman whispered about in every corner of the world. She will not die here, not yet. She snaps a Root agent's neck with the heel of her foot and uses the smoke cover from her _katon jutsu _to spin the webs of a _genjutsu_. The woman trying to decapitate her from behind stumbles to her knees, and she's vomiting up her entrails (isn't she?) and _oh god_ she can't breathe and she can't move and she's choking to death.

That's the fun thing about illusions. If you persuade the brain that the body is in distress, the body becomes distressed in response to the panic signals radiating out from the brain. All very cyclical, very neat. Very lethal.

Shisui is so fast she's dizzy. She's here and there, her blade snagging on pulsing arteries, her eye whirling. She stumbles away from a clearing of corpses.

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Itachi's lips tremble. A fist clenches in his chest and a hand squeezes his throat. The world is wet and murky beyond a lens of tears.

She stands before him, eyes closed and crying red. Her breath rattles, slow and precious and dwindling. She holds out her palm.

"You're the only one I trust." Her smile is wry and chapped, a pained thing. "Protect this village...and the Uchiha's name."

"Shisui," her name is a lump, a boulder that falls to the ground. So heavy.

She inches forward, leans into him. His hand curls around hers. Their lips brush, iron and anger and anguish. He can taste her death on his tongue.

When she pulls away, he cradles her eye. This one given, not stolen.

She wavers on her feet. "I'm going to erase my body," she says. "So that Danzo can't get it. Don't trust him, 'Tachi. The man's a viper and he hisses lies."

He can't speak. His grief will remain wordless, or he will scream it. So he nods, even though she can't see it.

And watches as she burns, her ashes carried away by the slithering river.

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Now, how did that old rhyme go? And all the king's horses and all the king's men...

Well, they pushed her off the wall in the first place.

**A/N: **Very weird, very vague. Listened to ''And All That Could Have Been'' by Nine Inch Nails while writing this, so that's probably why it's all angsty and strange. And, uh, I really don't know about the fem!Shisui. But there you have it. n_n


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